I’ve gotten requests for custom Nintendo Mii cross stitch patterns before, and I finally got around to putting a listing on our Etsy shop.

You can be the proud owner of your very own Nintendo Mii cross stitch pattern! You know you want to!

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Read that first sentence again, keeping in mind that this document was ratified by the US Senate and signed by President John Adams just shy of 21 years after independence was declared.

Yeah. It seems like the country may have lost its way in the subsequent 213 years.

Her name is Evie Tesla Greco. She was born September 11, 2010. We like her a lot.

Below is the report. Now to get to work translating.

Thanks Kohta!

Apparently people on iTunes are taking out their anger about how “effensive” Invention of Lying is. I’m glad they are getting out their frustrations.

The pataphor (Spanish: patáfora, French: pataphore), is a term coined by writer and musician Pablo Lopez, for an unusually extended metaphor based on Alfred Jarry’s “science” of ‘pataphysics. As Jarry claimed that ‘pataphysics existed “as far from metaphysics as metaphysics extends from regular reality,” a pataphor attempts to create a figure of speech that exists as far from metaphor as metaphor exists from non-figurative language. Whereas a metaphor is the comparison of a real object or event with a seemingly unrelated subject in order to emphasize the similarities between the two, the pataphor uses the newly created metaphorical similarity as a reality with which to base itself. In going beyond mere ornamentation of the original idea, the pataphor seeks to describe a new and separate world, in which an idea or aspect has taken on a life of its own.

Like ‘pataphysics itself, pataphors essentially describe two degrees of separation from reality (rather than merely one degree of separation, which is the world of metaphors and metaphysics). The pataphor may also be said to function as a critical tool, describing the world of “assumptions based on assumptions,” such as belief systems or rhetoric run amok. The following is an example:

Non-figurative
Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line.

Metaphor
Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line, two pieces on a chessboard.

Pataphor
Tom took a step closer to Alice and made a date for Friday night, checkmating. Rudy was furious at losing to Margaret so easily and dumped the board on the rose-colored quilt, stomping downstairs.

Thus, the pataphor has created a world where the chessboard exists, including the characters who live in that world, entirely abandoning the original context.

Lifted directly from the Wikipedia, of course.

And for reference, the original illustration.